Britain has a charity problem. No, that problem is not that Britons give too little to charity, tzdakah or zakat or whatever you wish to call it, far from it, Briton’s are extremely generous when it comes to giving to what they see as good causes. Britain’s problem is that the charity sector is, since reforms to charity law brought in by Tony Blair and David Cameron’s governments, significantly dominated by left wing thinking. Unfortunately this bias does not merely apply to a few individual charities but to a great deal of them and this bias is now also found in some of the various grant making trusts, some of whom were originally wholly different purposes from the left wing ones they fund today. What’s worse is that there are many obviously left wing charities, including as those in the immigration / open borders / asylum area who not only get money from grant making trusts that have been captured by the Left, but also get taxpayers money via government grants which they use in order to attack policies that have either been enacted or proposed by the government.

Poppy Coburn over at The Critic Magazine has done a really excellent job of digging into a lot of charities, including those in the migration field, who have been engaging in high levels of political activity and pushing for policies that, for example in the area of migration, might not be supported by the broader population of Britons. She has also in her article spoken about the great power that the big grant making trusts have and how that power is being directed almost entirely leftwards.

Ms Coburn said on the subject of politically motivated charities:

….last year an investigation by Conservative Way Forward exposed some extremely worrying practices. Its report, entitled “Defunding Politically Motivated Campaigns”, identified nearly £880m in public spending that backed charities involved in campaigns against government policies on migration, trans rights and the climate crisis: issues in which charitable groups were acting in direct contradiction to the wishes of voters. 

The taxpayer should not be funding nakedly partisan entities and campaigns like this. I, just as any other Briton can, if I wish, choose to support or not support charities based on their aims and objectives. I would certainly not choose to support trans rights agitators, or the followers of the climate Doomgoblin nor would I support open borders entities. If people want to know, for the record, what charities I do support then its mostly local ones and small Jewish ones. The only big national charity that I support is Combat Stress which my wife and I support on the grounds that both our late fathers and indeed other relatives too were ex-servicemen and this was the charity that my wife and I chose as our main wedding charity.

Ms Coburn also goes into some detail about the power held and used by the major grant making trusts. I’m really glad to see Ms Coburn turning her attention to this sector of the fund giving environment as these groups have massive amounts of money that too often gets donated to left wing causes. I’m particularly pleased to see Ms Coburn turning her attention to the Esmee Fairburn Foundation, which as I’ve pointed out in previous articles on here have also given money to Citizens UK an open borders, pro-migrant, left wing and pro-Islam community umbrella body of which more about from me, here, here and here.

Ms Coburn said on the subject of grantmaking trusts:

The account balances of Britain’s Big Foundations show the immensity of their wealth. The Paul Hamlyn Foundation is worth £800m. The Barrow Cadbury Trust is worth around £80m; the Joseph Rowntree Foundation holds £428m, while the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation has an enviable £1.1bn. According to the Charity Excellence Framework, over 200 new grant-giving foundations were created in 2022 alone. 

Please go and read Ms Coburn’s really good article on the corruption and politicisation of Britain’s charity sector, the shift left of various grantmaking trusts and the scandalous situation of British governments funding charities that then lobby against that government. You can read the entirety of Ms Coburn’s piece via the link below.

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2023/radical-chic-charities/